The saint louis county department of public health (DPH) in missouri is applying for a category 1A units of local government in an urban area or large county award in the amount of $533,334 per year…

The saint louis county department of public health (DPH) in missouri is applying for a category 1A units of local government in an urban area or large county award in the amount of $533,334 per year for three years. The saint louis county department of public health will be implementing the substance use public health emergency response (SUPHER) program, which will implement a range of allowable grant activities, including embedding support staff at any intercept of the sequential intercept model, evidence-based substance use disorder treatment (such as mat, harm reduction activities, and recovery support services) for populations leaving the jail, real-time data collection, and other field-initiated projects that bring together justice, behavioral health, and public health practitioners. The SUPHER program will design, develop, and refine outreach within DPH corrections medicine (CM) to identify, refer, and coordinate induction/maintenance of medication assisted treatment (mat) and increase linkage to care and social services navigation for justice involved individuals. The SUPHER program will also create a multi-disciplinary coordinating body of justice services, behavioral health, and public health practitioners to establish an overdose fatality review (OFR) board to review cases, share and provide data, and identify intervention points for outreach and education. Lastly, the SUPHER program will assist and expand project eagle fang, a project within the toxicology lab of dphs medical examiner (me) office that tests drug paraphernalia obtained from the scene of fatal overdoses and will allow SUPHER to identify emerging trends in drugs associated with fatal overdose. IT is through these three objectives that SUPHER will work towards the goal of: address the needs of justice involved individuals (JIIS) and reduce drug overdoses. This program serves saint louis county, missouri, with approximately 1 million residents. The program includes partnerships with the saint louis county department of justice services (DJS) buzz westfall center, DPH CM, and dphs me office that continues to build upon system changes for OUD prevention, treatment and recovery that have been activated. This project will focus explicitly on reaching high-risk and vulnerable populations (justice-involved persons, racial minorities (black males specifically), active drug users and at-risk youth) through continued implementation of missouris medication frist treatment model for OUD, the aim is to increase access to evidence-based medications and improve transitions of care upon discharge.